Reaction
by varietyofwords
Summary: A breakdown over three parts told by her, him, and them. Mark/Lexie. Ignores events of "Holidaze" and beyond.
1. Her

Title: **Reaction**  
>Chapter Title: <strong>Her<strong>  
>Fandom: <strong>Grey's Anatomy<strong>  
>Coupling: <strong>MarkLexie**  
>Rating: <strong>PG-13T**  
>Words: <strong>1,020<strong>  
>Author's Note: <strong>I wrote this back in November 2009. Just now getting up the courage to post it somewhere other than my blog. This is part one of three. Oh, and it completely ignores the events of the episode "Holidaze" and beyond.<br>**

She's a stress eater, a nervous eater. She must have gained ten extra pounds in between the time she found out she was pregnant and the time she broke the news to him.

"_I'm…I'm pregnant," she blabbers. "And I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing because I don't know how you feel, and if you're not happy, then I don't know what I'm going to do because I need you. I need you, Mark, and babies aren't really your thing unless you get to attach their arms. Oh my god. Oh my god, what if I need a caesarean and the quack OB cuts his arm off. And then you can't operate on him because you're his dad and you're family and he's left without a right arm. And kids, they're really mean, and they like to make fun of other kids on the playground. He'll be scarred for life. Literally and emotionally. And…Will you say something here because I'm totally freaking out, and I need to know how you feel about our kid. Our armless kid."_

"_You're pregnant?"_

And then when everything went pear-shaped, when the ultrasound showed gastroschisis – also called paraohphalocele, laparoschisis, abdominoschisis, or abdominal hernia – she ate four Butterfinger candy bars while waiting for Arizona Robbins to come and speak to them. She moaned and cried and ate two whole pints of Haagen-Dazs rum raisin ice cream in between contractions after Robbins, her OB-GYN, and Addison Montgomery via conference call decided to induce labor today.

"_It's a girl, Lexie!"_

The confirmation of her daughter's diagnosis made her eat seven cups of Jell-O in the recovery room, and then she got her sister, Molly, to sneak in a greasy cheeseburger and fries from the burger joint three streets over once she was in her own room. So when he came to give her an update and tried to describe the baby down to the last freckle for her, he was confronted with the image of her mid-bite. There was a drab of cheese on her chin and a smudge of ketchup on her cheek, and he wanted to scream at her for eating at a time like this.

"_She's perfect. Absolutely perfect."_

She nodded and shoved another fry in her mouth before she realized that everyone was looking at her expectantly. And then she started to tear up because the fries weren't helping keep the stress and the nerves and the subsequent emotions at bay.

"_I can't…I can't…Gastroschisis is really, really scary. I mean, it sounds cool when you're a surgical intern because this baby's organs are growing outside their body and you get to put them back in. But she's mine and she's a part of me and she could, she could die."_

She spouted out definitions from medical textbooks verbatim because she's Lexipedia and she has a photographic memory and she just knows these things. He held in her arms and kissed her on the top of her head as she sobbed and sobbed because he's her comforter. And then when Cristina Yang came to tell her to they're taking Baby Sloan-Gray into surgery, he kicked everyone out, crawled in bed next to her, and stroked her hair because that's what she likes someone to do for her when she's sick.

It was agony watching the hands on the clock tick slowly, and it was painful for her to curl into him anymore than she already was. Her lady parts were throbbing, but her heart was throbbing even more.

And then he pulled away from her, which caused her to whimper and try to pull closer to him, because Robbins and Addison were in her room to break the news.

"_We were able to get twenty percent of her organs back into her chest cavity, which is good for her gestational date, but she's going to be in the NICU for quite some time," Arizona tells them softly. _

"_How many more surgeries?" He asks because he's stronger._

"_It's difficult to say, but she's probably going to have to undergo at least three more," Addison replies honestly. _

Now she stuffs her face with chocolate chips as they wheel her to the NICU because it's so difficult for her see her baby like this and she's a stress eater. She's a stress eater and this is what stress eaters do. So she's got fists full of chocolate chips as the nurses try to help shove a yellow trauma gown over her arms, which garnishes her odd looks from those same nurses. And she struggles to hand over her chocolate chips when she's wheeled over the hand washing station, but she does and she washes her hand for the required five minutes before they slap some gloves on her and wheel her towards her baby.

"_Lexie, Mark, we managed to get eighty percent of her intestine into her chest cavity, but there was a complication."_

The OB nurse parks her wheelchair right next to her boyfriend – her strong, ecstatic boyfriend who's got this ridiculous grin on his face – but her eyes aren't on him. They're on her daughter, on the tubes going in and out of her, on the bandage taped across her chest, on the clump of bluish-red organs outside her body.

She wants her chocolate chips back.

"_In English, please," Thatcher says._

"_Essentially, we cannot finish surgery until we're able to stretch a patch of skin with a balloon, remove it, and use it to place over her belly."_

She's been alive for eighty-seven hours and has already been in and out of surgery four times. Her mother, though, can't even look at her. She's shut her eyes as tight as possible, and all of the sudden she's gasping for air because she can't breathe.

She _can't _breathe.

She can't breathe, and her boyfriend is glaring at her because he doesn't understand. She is his second chance; she is his redemption. But for her mother, she is someone she failed, someone she couldn't even shield from pain before she arrived. She is someone good girl Lexie Grey couldn't be perfect for.


	2. He

Title: **Reaction**  
>Chapter Title: <strong>He<strong>  
>Fandom: <strong>Grey's Anatomy<strong>  
>Coupling: <strong>MarkLexie**  
>Rating: <strong>PG-13T**  
>Words: <strong>1,020<strong>  
>Author's Note: <strong>Completely ignores the events of the episode "Holidaze" and beyond.<br>**

He watches for even breathing like a hawk. The rise and fall of her chest in a steady rhythm means she's still here with them and that she's not going anywhere. So he can ignore the patch of white dressing over her tiny belly, the clump of intestines outside her belly, and the yellow tube threaded through her nose as long as her chest continues to rise and fall rhythmically.

Up. Down. Up. Down.

He abhors the NICU, especially now that she's here, because it smells like hand sanitizer, tears, and, worst of all, death. The smell alone makes him jumpy and nervous; the sight makes him nauseous. She's so tiny and frail, and when he works up the nerve to reach in and touch her, her little clinched fist barely unfurls to cover one third of his pinky. He can't tell if her little tuff of brown hair is soft under his gloved hair nor can he feel if her skin is silk smooth like her mother's.

He understands the need for a sterile environment; the incubator's plastic bubble separating father and daughter also separates her from infection and certain death. But it's hard because he wants to be a good dad, and good dads are able to hold their daughters and shield them from the world. But, most of all, he wants her to know how much he loves her because she's perfect.

Her little pursed lips, her tuff of black hair, and her nose remind him of her mother's; her cheekbones and tiny ears are all him. So despite the gastroschisis – the large and small intestine growing outside her body – she's everything and then some to him. Perfection in a bubble.

Perfection, though, that lacks a name. He wants to name for the mother he wished he had and the mother she wishes was still around. She refuses to pick one for some reason unknown to him, and therefore 'perfection in a bubble' is being called Baby Grey-Sloan.

And he longs to give her a name because he cannot bear to lose another nameless child.

He keeps repeating the ninety percent survival rate over and over again in his head, but the thought of losing her lingers in the back of his mind.

His silent mantra is broken, though, by the gasp to his right. His girlfriend hasn't seen her since she caught a peak of her slippery and slimy body being rushed from between her legs to the awaiting NICU team other than the three pictures Carolyn Shepard managed to snap of the baby before she was wheeled into surgery.

He tears his gaze away from his daughter to look at his girlfriend; he wants to see her reaction first hand. But her reaction leaves him less than satisfactory because Lexie Gray has shut her eyes, Lexie Gray is trembling, Lexie Gray has shrunken into herself and has withdrawn from her own daughter. And then she's gasping for air like she can't breathe, like she's drowning just like him. So he tears his eyes away from his daughter and looks at her – _really_ looks at her.

She obviously hasn't had a shower since before she gave birth because her hair is stringy and shines with grease. She obviously hasn't slept because there are dark circles under her eyes and she just looks like pure exhaustion.

But he's looking at her and he doesn't understand why she's so withdrawn into herself when their daughter could _die_.

No, he tells himself. He won't think like that.

And she's looking at him as she gasps for air, reaching out for him with her ghostly pale fingers, and he's realizing she's in as much agony as he is because Baby Grey-Sloan may be his second chance, but she's her first and if her breathing stops being steady, she's going to fall apart just like he did.

So he reaches out to her and grasps her hand in his. Their touch feels fake and plastic through the latex gloves, but the emotion is still there.

_I've got you._

He sinks down so he can look at her in the eyes so he can plead without words for her to take deep breaths. She tries to focus on him, but continues to claw at her neck with her other hand because she can't breathe and she's freaking out.

_Help me._

"Lex," he tells her, "Lexie, look at me."

And he can tell she's trying desperately to focus on him, but trying isn't good enough right now so he reaches up to touch her cheek.

"Look at me," he commands, and despite her gaps for air, she finally manages to focus on him. Her eyes pled with him to help her, to make the pain and fear go away.

"One. Two. One. Two," he says slowly, deliberately. "She breathes steadily. One. Two. One. Two."

She's looking at him like he's crazy because, really, who counts out their baby's breaths? So he grabs the hand that's holding her throat, and pulls in through the hole on the incubator's side even though his hand plus hers don't really fit through the plastic sleeve. And gingerly so as to not wake the sleeping baby, he places her two fingers on their daughter's small chest right over her beating heart.

"One. Two," he says over and over again. "One. Two."

Slowly, her gasps turn to shaky breaths, and he thinks he's done well until she begins to cry. Big tears roll down her face and leave water marks on her yellow trauma gown; big tears that leave streaks on her cheeks and stain his heart.

"She's breathing," she whimpers.

"She's breathing," he repeats because the whole thing _is_ a novel idea. She's new and exciting, and at less than a week old, she's already giving him gray hairs.

When she squirms a bit, he tries to pull back to keep from hurting her, but her mother won't let him. And then her little eyelids flutter and she looks at them with big, round eyes that remind him of her mother's. And he falls even further in love.


	3. They

Title: **Reaction**  
>Chapter Title: <strong>They<strong>  
>Fandom: <strong>Grey's Anatomy<strong>  
>Coupling: <strong>MarkLexie**  
>Rating: <strong>PG-13T**  
>Words: <strong>1,573<strong>  
>Author's Note: <strong>Completely ignores the events "Holidaze" and beyond. I kept waffling between happy and sad and finally just had to go with my gut. Forewarning, tissues might be nice to have on hand. I'm a bit dark and twisty. Caroline is pronounced Care-o-line. Music recommendation: "Set the Fire to the Third Bar" by Snow Patrol.<strong>

The little black dress billed as a requirement for any smart girl's wardrobe has been enveloped in sadness for too long. She's worn it to so many grave sites in the past couple of years; first her mother, then George O'Malley, followed by a handful of patients she got too close to, and finally her babysitter from when she was younger, Mrs. Malone. And now it's hanging on the rack of her closet taunting her because she has to put it on again and she would give anything not to have to.

"_I don't want her to go into her final surgery without a name," he tells her. She pauses mid-chew and looks at him like a deer in the headlights. "I don't want Arizona and Addison to refer to her a 'Baby Grey-Sloan' as they cut into her."_

_What he doesn't say – what he really means – is that he doesn't want her to die without a name. _

_Her mother puts her fork down, swallows the piece of lettuce she was chewing, and takes a sip from her apple juice box. She looks innocent, but there's a lurking fear in her eyes that makes him hesitant to say anything. Yet, he feels really strong about this issue, so he does._

"_She needs a name," he says. "And I was thinking maybe we could name after…you."_

"_Me?" She asks incredulously. "No, I…I don't even like my name hence the nickname, and she's her own person so she should have her own name."_

"_Not Lexie Junior," he says with a trace of laughter. "That would inflate your ego."_

"_My ego?"_

"_Uh huh," he replies. "But maybe Caroline for your middle name, and it's variation of Mrs. Shepard's first name so that's good too."_

"_Caroline?" She questions, and then repeats to test it out. "Caroline. Caroline Grey-Sloan."_

"_Caroline," he affirms. "Caroline Sloan."_

_Her chin starts to quiver, though, because he's just shoved her out of the picture, and that scares her._

"_Sloan? She's my baby too, Mark." _

"_I know," he replies. "But Grey-Sloan is kind of a mouthful, and I figured if we named her after you, we could name her after me."_

_Her chin's quivering, and there are tears, but they're the kind of good tears because the little baby she's too afraid to touch has a name and a daddy that loves her dearly. _

_Caroline Susanne Sloan._

She doubts it fits. The stress eating and the weight gained with pregnancy have accumulated around her hips and thighs and face as well as in an empty, saggy lump across her stomach. She feels horribly unattractive, but mostly empty because all she has to show for the last thirty weeks is a lumpy body, tear-stained cheeks, and a broken heart.

He watches her from the door to the bathroom; watches as she stares at the dress hanging from the rod in her closet. At any other moment he'd be aroused by her naked body, but not today. Not when they have to leave for _it_ in a few minutes. He hasn't shaved his beard since all of this happened and it scratches the back of his hand as he rubs it across his cheek. He should shave because he looks good shaved, but then the dark circles and bags under his eyes would be more obvious and he's just _so _tired.

She rips the dress off the hanger, but her anger dissipates and she lets it fall through her fingers to the ground. Her chest begins to heave as dry sobs rack her frame and she sinks down onto the bed they once shared.

"_The transplanted skin became infected and had to be removed. We've put the baby…"_

"_Caroline," Thatcher interrupts. "Her name is Caroline."_

"_Caroline is now a antibiotics regiment, but the infection has spread pretty quickly," Addison finishes._

"_What does that mean?" Thatcher interrupts again. _

"_You should prepare yourself," Arizona says as gently as possible. _

They stand apart around the rim of the hole in the ground; a divide between them filled with pain, hurt, and the empty words of "If there's anything I can do to help". They opted to have a private ceremony, but privacy is hard to come by at Seattle Grace-Mercy West and it seems like everyone is there. The attending, residents, nurses, and even the interns that annoy him. Her sister and her father stand around her with her brother-in-law hovering in the background (he reckons they left the baby with Eric's family), and rather than turn to him for comfort she has retreated into herself with her pain and anger and sadness.

Behind him and around him is his family – Derek, Callie, Arizona, and Mrs. Shepard, who flew in from New York with a no-nonsense attitude and words that told him he could cry. He never cried over his first chance; he can't cry over his second chance.

The reverend finishes talking, but neither he nor she registers the words. Which is oddly ironic considering that when it became abundantly clear they were going to lose her, she demanded that he get someone to baptize her right away.

"_I know neither of us are religious, but you were baptized Catholic and I went to the Methodist church down the road for Christmas and Easter when I was a kid and I can't…I can't stomach the idea that, if there is a heaven, she won't…go. There." _

She watches the tiniest coffin in the world be lowered down into the hole in the ground. It's dark and damp and scary and all she wants to do is scope her baby up and save her from being swallowed up by the dark hole. Truth be told, though, she wants to go too. She tries to barter and beg and ask Him to take her instead, or at the very least to take her too. And when the world's tiniest coffin reaches the bottom of the hole – the softness of its landing sounding like a horrific thud in their ears – she resists the urge to jump in too.

He, on the other hand, turns away as friends and family drop pink Gerbera daisies into the hole (an act of comfort the funeral home director told him as he attempted to keep his head above water and plan this whole thing), and instead jams his hands into his suit pocket and walks away.

People part like the Red Sea around him, but they shoot him looks mixed with sympathy and disbelief at his action. As he gets away from the rest of the crowd and away from the safety of the tent, his suit becomes dampened. The raindrops hide his tears, but anger is hard to hide as he rips off his tie in frantic, clawing motions.

_She feels weightless in his arms but at the same time she's heavy. Margaret, from Pictures of Hope, hovers in the background trying to be stealthy and nonintrusive of what will probably be their final moments as daddy and daughter. The click of her camera gives her away, but he's glad she's here because if nothing else he wants one real photo of him and his daughter, of mommy and daughter, and of the three of them as a family. _

"_Mark," she whispers. "Can I…I'd like to…"_

_He doesn't say anything because he knows what she wants and so as she sinks down in the chair next to him, he carefully shifts Caroline from his arms to hers only to watch her face crumble into tears. _

"_Oh sweet Caroline," she croons. "You're so beautiful. So beautiful. And Mommy loves you so much."_

He's slightly drunk when he stumbles back to their apartment after sunset. There's casserole dishes everywhere but he still expects to see smiling pregnant Lexie standing behind the counter munching on something. Reality smacks him in the face when he sees Callie standing behind the counter washing dishes with Arizona placing them into the dishwasher.

"Where have you been?" Callie hisses at him. Arizona freezes and tears spring to her eyes. She's lost patients before, but this is her wife's best friend's daughter.

"Where's Lex?" He mumbles.

"She's locked herself in the bathroom," Cristina tells him in a matter of fact tone. "Meredith and Grey 3.0 are trying to convince her to come out."

He nods and drops the tie he's been carrying around his hand since the funeral onto the couch. His suit jacket is next, and everyone is looking at him like he's spouted a third eye. He shrugs off their stares and strides through the living room, into the bedroom, and right to the door of their bathroom. Molly steps aside, but Meredith looks like she's going to say something and before she opens her mouth he knocks on the door.

"Little Grey," he says, "open the door."

It takes a moment, but finally the door clicks open and she peers out around the door.

"Mark," she whimpers. He doesn't wait for her to say something more, but instead steps into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him. Her brown hair is falling into her eyes, her eyes are bloodshot, and her cheeks are stained with tears. With a sob she falls into his arms, and tightens his grip around her.

"I allowed myself to hope," she sniffles. "I thought…she wasn't supposed to die."

"I know," he whispers before placing a kiss on the crown of her head. "I know."


End file.
